The painter David Bomberg was one of the “Whitechapel Boys,” the cohort of British Jewish writers and painters who emerged from the immigrant quarter of East London in the early twentieth century. He studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1911 to 1913 but was expelled for the radicalism of his style, which was influenced by Italian futurism and cubism. After the war, his style changed, and he began to focus on landscapes. From 1923 to 1927, he painted and sketched in Mandate Palestine with the financial support of the Zionist movement. He is considered one of the great painters of twentieth-century Britain.
The blue and white abstract shapes in The Mud Bath evoke human figures in motion against a field of red. Are they meant to be people at a public bathhouse? Or are they interpreted that way because the…
Among the figures of contemporary ballet on the Maryinsky’s stage, Mathilda Kshesinskaya constitutes a phenomenon of exceptional interest. Her name enjoys great fame, her talent—unusually brilliant…
The young Jewish intellectuals of Barcinski’s generation were interested in pushing boundaries, including by employing Christian imagery, as Barcinski did in this portrait of John the Baptist. The…